For some really random reason, when I give any thought at all to the image I project on the web, I think of myself as a fanartist. Never mind that I haven't drawn much fanart recently, but have been drawing a bunch of original stuff. Never mind that my fanfics are more popular than my fanart. Never mind that my blog is more popular than my fics and art put together. I -think- of myself as a fanartist. Who just happens to have a weblog thingie.
So, when I chose IRC channels to inhabit, I chose channels full of artists. My online friends are all artists, or have been artists at one point, or can at least talk convincingly about art. We talk about art. Well, we talk about other things (our lives, yaoi, our SOs, yaoi, the stupidity of everyone but us, yaoi, how good/bad we are at HTML, yaoi, how we're all big stupid fangirls and isn't it great, yaoi). But still, we're always circling back to art eventually.
After a year and a half or so, things have started to shake out, and I have a small but dedicated inner circle of arty friends who think a lot like I do. We hang out on IRC and ICQ together. We show each other our new artwork the second it's completed. Our IRC channel is called #oldhagsintoyaoi, for crying out loud. (For the record, that channel exists on esper.net... while we're theoretically an open chan, be prepared for a bunch of cynical vicious weird old yaoi fangirls who will probably hate you if you do decide to come visit. Fair warning.)
This is great, right? I have these good friends and we're all interested in the same things. And it IS great.
But here's the weird bit.
About two weeks ago, one of our number made an observation. "You know," she said, "we're all starting to draw like one another." And she's RIGHT. We are. We looked at our recent stuff, and we could easily pick out each other's influence. It's cool, but it's weird. I can pick out the clear influence of no less than three of my online friends in my most recent stuff.
Of course, they're all MUCH MUCH better artists than I am, so I don't mind a bit. I am an artistic leech.
Replies: add your comment: currently 2 comments
Hmmm....I've heard of this; people who hang out together long enough start to assimilate the stylings of each other until they are one. Either that, or it's a FORCED "conversion". Heh.
Still...I think that is kind of weird. And interesting. ^_'
Posted by Wolf @ 08/01/2001 01:39 PM EST
[ping] It's happened to me. I looked at my doodles one day, and realized how similar it looked to my friends'. Was a little freaky, but altogether nifty when ya hang out with better artists.
When ya think about it, it seems natural to pick out what you like about certain styles and add it to your own style, especially when you're surrounded by them. But when you're not conscious of it happening...it's so weird. *gives friends an evil eye* @o@ Strange. And cool.
Posted by Quezzie @ 08/02/2001 02:15 PM EST
